Chapter 55

AFTER MIDNIGHT

I’m staring blankly at the television screen in the hospital waiting room when I hear someone sit down beside me.

“He isn’t guilty,” Marjorie whispers, jutting her chin at the TV. “It’s the blond prep-school teen who witnessed the crime.”

I click off the television. We’re the only two people in the waiting room, so nobody protests. In the sudden quiet, I hear the walls humming around me, full of the sounds of machines and people breathing in rooms beyond.

“Are you here to keep me company?” I ask. “Or to take me home?”

“I’m here to convince you that you need a hamburger,” she says. Marjorie spreads the fabric of her Indian skirt over the torn chair cushion, hiding its orange foam guts.

“I don’t want to leave.”

“I know, but you can’t get in to see her until eight, anyway. We’ll just hit the drive-through and come right back.” Marjorie sees me hesitate, and adds, “You have to come with me! I’m starving, but those drive-through intercoms freak me out. Don’t make me go alone. Please?”

Then she gently takes my hand and tugs on it until I follow her to the door. I’m too numb to put up much of a fight.

Marjorie’s car is a vintage Buick and smells like an old man. But it’s still warm from her trip out to find me, and it’s snug as we drive around looking for burger places. I tuck the Snuggie I’m wearing under my thighs.

“I always love driving around at night, don’t you?” Marjorie says. We pass a streetlight, and it illuminates her face, then plunges her into darkness again.

“I don’t really do it much.” A country-western song mumbles from the radio. I can’t make out the words to the song, but it’s comforting, somehow.

“Mom and I used to drive at night all the time. Especially in the winter. We’d head out and look at people’s Christmas lights. In summer, we’d drive around with the windows open, let the breeze blow over us.” Marjorie is smiling as she says this. It’s sweet to imagine her and Mrs. Morris out for a drive.

“She always supported me,” Marjorie says. “Even when I wasn’t a very good daughter, she always acted like I put the stars in the sky. I was so lucky.”

“You were,” I agree. We both were.

“She never told me to get a real job or to give up on my screenplay,” Marjorie goes on. “She believed in me. Even when I had doubts, she always believed.”

Marjorie is humming to herself as she drives, and I realize that she’s not just a crazy flake. She’s a person following her dream. When you look at it in a certain light, she’s incredibly brave.

I lean my head against the glass and look out the window. We’re passing a strip mall, like a million others, but the lights look pretty to me, glowing in the darkness like that. It’s a strange, beautiful world, but I don’t think I understand it very well.

Katie seemed perfect.

Marjorie seemed flaky.

I’m starting to think I’m not such a good judge of whether or not people have it together.